Our strategy
The original goal of Basegun is to provide the legal category of a firearm in France.
This may seem like a trivial matter.
You probably imagine something like this ?
And probably, you would not be suspicious of the object in this picture ?
Yet, the first example is not a firearm, but the second is. This shows the difficulty of firearm identification
According to Wikipedia, "A firearm is any type of gun designed to be readily carried and used by an individual.[...]A firearm is a barreled ranged weapon that inflicts damage on targets by launching one or more projectiles driven by rapidly expanding high-pressure gas produced by exothermic combustion (deflagration) of a chemical propellant, historically black powder, now smokeless powder."
Quick summary:
- a firearm uses pyrotechnics to fire bullets
- a firearm must be carriable (this excludes machine guns, etc.)
There is actually a whole range of objects which look like firearms, but aren't according to the above definition.
- Airsofts : these are objects which fire plastic balls, with low pressure under 2 Joules (kind of link paintball). They are very common in France and are considered as objects : anyone can buy them.
- Airguns : these are objects which fire metal balls using the pressure of gaz, the most common being C02. If the pressure is under 20 Joules are category D, if the pressure is above they are category C.
- Replicas : some brands like DENIX create imitations of firearms which are just objects, there is no mechanism inside.
- Neutralized firearms : former firearm which have been deactivated by an official neutralisation office (in France Banc d'épreuve de St-Etienne). It is usually category C, depending on how old the neutralisation operation dates.
- All the hidden guns : hidden in a cane, in a pen, in a ring... These are out of range of Basegun perimeter.
- Exotic kinds of guns like "Le Gaulois", trailblazer lifecard, ...
As explained above, first one must determine when seeing a gun whether it is a real firearm or not. When it is the case, referring to the French legislation, the legal category of a firearm depends:
- whether it's a hand gun or long gun
- whether it fires in automatic, semi-automatic or manual mode
- the number of munitions the firarm can hold
- for long guns, the total length or the firearm and the length of the barrel
- for long guns, whether it's pump-action, in this case whether the barrel is smooth or rifled
- whether it's a historic firearm before 1900
Based on these elements we made the following strategy.
The mecanism of a firearm is an objective, descriptive information which can help us to know:
- whether it's a hand gun or long gun
- whether it fires in automatic, semi-automatic or manual mode
- for long guns, whether it's pump-action
- whether it's a historic firearm before 1900
Therefore we created a Machine Learning algorithm which analyses a picture of a gun and tries to guess its mechanism.